Into Bavaria, like a winter torrent,
Did that Gustavus pour, and at Vienna
In his own palace did the Emperor tremble.
Soldiers were scarce, for still the multitude
Follow the luck all eyes were turn'd on me,
Their helper in distress: the Emperor's pride

Bow'd itself down before the man he had injured.

If the I alone! of these lines recals the Alone I did it! of Caius Marcius fluttering the Volscians in Corioli, what follows will iterate the reminder (always with a difference):

'Twas I must rise, and with creative word
Assemble forces in the desolate camps.

I did it. Like a god of war, my name

Went through the world. The drum was beat, and lo!

The plough, the workshop is forsaken, all

Swarm to the old familiar long-loved banners;

And as the wood-choir rich in melody

Assemble quick around the bird of wonder,

When first his throat swells with his magic song,

So did the warlike youth of Germany

Crowd in around the image of my eagle.*

And so Wallenstein went forth to do the State some service, which done, the Emperor would listen to the Jesuits again, and give due heed to their conclave of whisperings, swellings, tumults-all against the bold bad man whom his majesty was (quite ad interim, and only pro tempore) turning to present use.

It is a well-confirmed fact, says Menzel, that Wallenstein carried on negotiations with Saxony and Brandenburg, and that the latter hoped by his aid to restore the intermediate power so long desired between the emperor and Sweden. According to the same authority it is also indubitable that France favoured this intrigue and assured to Wallenstein the possession of Bohemia: and if, at the same time, he secretly corresponded with Oxenstiern, it was solely for the purpose of compelling the others to accede to better terms; the Swede did not believe him to be in earnest. "It is impossible to discover to what lengths Wallenstein intended to go. His first object was at all events to secure a support in case he should again fall a victim to the Spanish-Bavarian faction. At the same time he confided the fact of his negotiations to the Emperor, who, believing their sole object to be to sound all parties, authorised him to carry them on. The ambiguity and reserve with which he subsequently acted, rendered him an object of suspicion to either side, and, moreover, no one valued his alliance unless he was backed by his army. The cessation of hostilities, caused by continual negotiation, was, meanwhile, highly distasteful to his soldiery, into whose minds prejudices were busily instilled by the Jesuits, who, at the same time, whispered to the bigoted Catholics that the Duke of Friedland was on the point of going over to the Protestants." What was the duke to do, to secure his standing, and perhaps save his life?

* Schiller, Death of Wallenstein, Act III. Sc. 13.
† Menzel, § ccviii.

Feb.-VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCCCLXX.

N

-For he was at the stake,
And bay'd about with many enemies;

And some that smiled,

(like that glozing, smooth-spoken epicurean, Octavio Piccolomini, for instance) had in their hearts, he fear'd,

Millions of mischief.*

Wallenstein, then, as Menzel shapes the record, "either unable or unwilling to come to terms with the enemy unless secure beforehand of the co-operation of his army," endeavoured to "outwit the Jesuits" by offering to resign his command. The army took this offer as he expected: all the camp was in commotion; the whole of his officers at Pilsen entreated him not to abandon them, and a document was got up and signed by them, which bound them (by individual "voluntary subscriptions," the least of these "gratefully received,") never to abandon him. Meanwhile the Jesuits were egging on their Imperial creature at Vienna, to rid himself, by hook or by crook (the Spanish ambassador said, by knife or by bullet), of this master of too many legions. Wallenstein's apologists might say of these Imperial counsellors,

"Tis ye drive on the trial;

He never would have sought it, so your fears
Had let him live in peace; but evermore

Ye fear'd and fear'd till dangerous ye made him.+

Be that as it may, the Rubicon ‡ was passed now: Ferdinand resolves on assassination, and Wallenstein is in open revolt. In the hour of peril, and when close pressed by the conquering Swedes, the Emperor had "conferred almost dictatorial power on the man from whose aid he alone expected safety. But no sooner"-thus Colonel Mitchell describes his conduct-"was the first peril over, than the imagination of the terrified sovereign, magnified into treason and rebellion the exercise of the power which he had before delegated. In his base and unkingly fear,-to acquit him even of envy and avarice, he condemned without a trial or hearing; and not only handed over the man, who had twice saved the monarchy, to the halberds of hired assassins, but rendered himself an active party to the crime by the treachery of his conduct.

"In order to deceive his intended victim, and to render the blow more certain, he remained in constant and confidential correspondence with Wallenstein, for twenty days after the betrayed General had been outlawed as a rebel. True it is, that he afterwards caused three thousand masses to be said for the souls of the slain; and courtiers and confessors

*Julius Cæsar, Act IV. Sc. 1.

Henry Taylor's "Isaac Comnenus," Act I. Sc. 2.

-What am I doing worse

Than did famed Cæsar at the Rubicon,

When he the legions led against his country,

The which his country had deliver'd to him?
Had he thrown down the sword, he had been lost,

As I were, if I but disarm'd myself.

SCHILLER, The Death of Wallenstein, Act II. Sc. 2.

may, by such means, have silenced the feeble voice of the royal conscience. But the voice of history will not be so silenced; and the name of Ferdinand II. will be handed down to latest posterity as the name of a sovereign in whose callous heart not even imperial sway could raise one spark of noble fire; who, while crawling in the dust before images and relics, remained deaf to the duties of Christianity, and repaid the greatest service ever rendered to a prince, by one of the foulest deeds of treason and of murder recorded in the dark annals of human crime."*

When, as we read in Michelet, the cities of Rome, Madrid, and Vienna, and the Jesuits far and wide, had illuminations and fêtes to celebrate the Battle of Lutzen, it was not merely because Gustavus was dead, but because Wallenstein was ruined, and would soon (it was evident) have to restore to the Emperor his office as commander of the Catholic forces, and therewith restore absolute unity to the high-church league. "Qui dit l'Empereur dit les Jesuites. Ils sont les vainqueurs des vainqueurs." Had there not, says Mr. Carlyle,† been elsewhere a nobler loyalty to God's cause than was to be found in Germany at that date, "Ignatius with his rosaries and gibbet-ropes, with his honey-mouthed Fathers Lämmerlein in black serge, and heavy-fisted Fathers Wallenstein in chain armour, must have carried it; and that alarming Lutheran new-light would have been got extinguished again."+-Wallenstein gone, where is the Commanderin-Chief?-M. Michelet will answer for us: Yonder, at a prie-Dieu, with a Jesuit on either side of him. And certes, these reverend satellites, Father Lämmerlein and Father Hyacinth, would answer the question with extreme complacency, by showing the inquirer the living work of their hands-a Kaiser, but their creature, their peculiar property,-in the shape of a little fat man, over whom the good fathers keep watch and ward, by day and by night, never letting him out of their sight, but vigilantly attending him from the chapel to the oratory, and from the oratory to the chapel. Heureux mélange du sot, du furieux, combinaison savante d'aveugle docilité et de stupidité sauvage."§ To which "happy mixture incarnate of bigotry, dulness, and blind credulity, Wallenstein owed his death, and three thousand masses for his soul.

* Mitchell's Life of Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland (1837).

Latter-day Pamphlets, No. VIII. "Jesuitism."

Very nearly the same sentence occurs in the author's "Friedrich II." See vol. ii. p. 327.

§ Michelet, t. xii. p. 130.

CURIOSITIES OF CEYLON.*

CEYLON, from whatever direction it is approached, we are told by Sir James Emerson Tennent, "unfolds a scene of loveliness and grandeur unsurpassed, if it be rivalled, by any land in the universe. The traveller from Bengal, leaving behind the melancholy delta of the Ganges and the torrid coast of Coromandel, or the adventurer from Europe, recently inured to the sands of Egypt and the scorched headlands of Arabia, is alike entranced by the vision of beauty which expands before him as the island rises from the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, and its shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, bright with the foliage of perpetual spring."

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The Brahmins designated this favoured island by the epithet of Lanka, "the resplendent," and in their dreamy rhapsodies they extolled it as the region of mystery and sublimity; they, indeed, constituted a kind of Paradise of the land, and pictured it to themselves as tenanted by an angelic race of beings. The Buddhist poets gracefully apostrophised it a pearl upon the brow of India ;" the Chinese knew it as the island of jewels; the Greeks as the land of the hyacinth and the ruby; the Muhammadans, in the intensity of their delight, assigned it to the exiled parents of mankind as a new Elysium to console them for the loss of Paradise; and the early navigators of Europe, as they returned dazzled with its gems, and laden with its costly spices, propagated the fable that far to the seaward the very breeze that blew from it was redolent of perfume.

As Ceylon has still maintained the renown of its attractions in our own less imaginative times, and exhibits, in the language of Lassen, the highest conceivable development of Indian nature, and as above all the learning and research of modern times have contributed to throw quite a new light upon the past and present history of this much-favoured land, as well as to give a more correct idea of its physical features, its natural history, and its works of art, a book of the character of Sir James Emerson Tennent's-a perfect Cyclopædia of Singhalese matters, and at once a compendious yet pleasant and readable synopsis of almost all that can be said of the country-was much wanted to take the place of the previous meagre, albeit in some instances meritorious, accounts furnished by Perceval, Cordiner, Wolf, Bertolacci, Davy, and others, to utilise the researches of learned Orientalists, whether British, French, or German, and to collect and sift the valuable matter diffused through the numerous and little-accessible publications of Ceylon itself.

As late as in Dr. Davy's time Ceylon was looked upon as but a fragment of the great Indian continent dissevered by some local convulsion, and it was supposed that the zoology and botany of the island were identical with those of the mainland. But since that time the researches of Kelaart, Gunther, Layard, and others, have shown that not only

*Ceylon: an Account of the Island, Physical, Historical, and Topographical; with Notices of its Natural History, Antiquities, and Productions. By Sir James Emerson Tennent, K.C.S., LL.D., &c. Third Edition. Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts.

plants but animals-mammalia, birds, reptiles, and insects-exist in Ceylon which are not to be found in the flora or fauna of the Indian conDr. Gunther remarks: "Amongst these larger islands which are connected with the middle palæotropical region, none offers forms so different from the continent and other islands as Ceylon. It might be considered the Madagascar of the Indian region. We not only find there peculiar genera and species, not again to be recognised in other parts, but even many of the common species exhibit such remarkable varieties as to afford ample means for creating new nominal species. Instead of presenting, in fact, as is generally assumed, an identity between its fauna and that of Southern India, Ceylon exhibits a remarkable diversity of type, taken in connexion with the limited area over which they are distributed. The island may, indeed, be regarded as the centre of a geographical circle, possessing within itself forms whose allied species radiate far into the temperate regions of the north, as well as into Africa, Australia, and the isles of the Eastern Archipelago." Geological analogy, so far as an inference is derivable from the formation of the adjoining coasts, both of India and Ceylon, is likewise opposed to the conclusion that Ceylon is but a fragment of the old continent of Asia.

Sir J. E. Tennent thus picturesquely describes the general appearance of the island:

The nucleus of its mountain masses consists of gneissic, granitic, and other crystalline rocks, which, in their resistless upheaval, have rent the superincumbent strata, raising them into lofty pyramids and crags, or hurling them in gigantic fragments to the plains below. Time and decay are slow in their assaults on these towering precipices and splintered pinnacles; and, from the absence of mere perishable materials, there are few graceful sweeps along the higher chains or rolling downs in the lower ranges of the hills. Every bold elevation is crowned by battlemented cliffs, and flanked by chasms, in which the shattered strata are seen as sharp and as rugged as if they had but recently undergone the grand convulsion that displaced them.

The soil in these regions is consequently light and unremunerative, but the plentiful moisture arising from the interception of every passing vapour from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, added to the intense warmth of the atmosphere, combine to force a vegetation so rich and luxuriant, that imagination can picture nothing more wondrous and charming; every level spot is enamelled with verdure: forests of never-fading bloom cover mountain and valley; flowers of the brightest hues grow in profusion over the plains; and delicate climbing plants, rooted in the shelving rocks, hang in huge festoons down the edge of every precipice.

Unlike the forests of Europe, in which the excess of some peculiar trees imparts a character of monotony and graveness to the outline and colouring, the forests of Ceylon are singularly attractive, from the endless variety of their foliage and the vivid contrast of their hues. The mountains, especially those looking towards the east and south, rise abruptly to prodigious and almost precipitous heights above the level plains; the rivers wind through woods below like threads of silver through green embroidery, till they are lost in a dim haze which conceals the far horizon; and through this a line of tremulous light marks where the sunbeams are glittering among the waves upon the distant shore.

From age to age a scene so lovely has imparted a colouring of romance to the adventures of the seamen who, in the eagerness of commerce, swept round the shores of India, to bring back the pearls and precious stones, the cinnamon and odours of Ceylon. The tales of the Arabians are fraught with the wonders of